In what is believed to be the first success of its kind, researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University have cloned a white-tailed deer. A fawn, named “Dewey,” after Duane Kraemer, one of the researchers, was born to a surrogate mother several months ago.
The fawn is believed to be the first successfully cloned deer and Texas A&M is the first academic institution in the world to have cloned five different species. Previously, researchers at the College of Veterina
When introduced to the world in 1998, human embryonic stem cells were considered heralds of a new age of transplant medicine. The prospect of an unlimited supply of cells and tissue of all kinds to treat disease captured public imagination and enthusiasm.
But lost in the glitz of the cells’ potential to treat an array of devastating and sometimes fatal diseases was another quality that, when all is said and done, could match even the prospect of remaking transplant technology.
A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute has identified a small synthetic molecule that can induce a cell to undergo dedifferentiation – to move backwards developmentally from its current state to form its own precursor cell.
This compound, named reversine, causes cells which are normally programmed to form muscles to undergo reverse differentiation – retreat along their differentiation pathway and turn into precursor cells.
These precursor cells are multipotent; that
Size matters, and colder temperatures make things bigger! This is true not just for most large furry animals and for birds, but also for the microscopic plants and animals that are at the base of the ocean’s food chain.
Scientists have long known that animals and plants are usually larger when they grow in colder environments. Now, for the first time David Atkinson, Ben Ciotti, and David Montagnes, from the University of Liverpool’s School of Biological Sciences, have found that this o
Biologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have demonstrated that desert dust promotes the growth of algae. Scientists had already assumed that the iron in desert dust stimulated algal growth, but this has now been demonstrated for the first time. The researchers have published their findings in the December issue of the Journal of Phycology.
The biologists cultured two species of diatoms in seawater originating from the iron-depleted Southern Ocean, the sea around the
This year, Roderick MacKinnon was recognized for working out the atomic structure of an ion channel and Peter Agre for discovering that a major protein found in red blood cells functions primarily as a water channel. Agre went on to establish the family of related channels, which he named “aquaporins.” Solving the structure of these channels provided a platform for exploring the underlying molecular mechanisms that allow the proteins to function as filters and maintain osmotic equilibrium. Robert Str
While the controversy surrounding the ethics of stem cell research shows no signs of abating, scientists continue to demonstrate the promise of stem cell–derived therapies for a wide range of degenerative diseases. The hope is that stem cells, which retain a unique “pluripotent” ability to morph into any of the 200 cell types of the human body, could be used to repair or replace damaged or diseased tissue. However, little is known about the molecular events that trigger this differentiation of stem c
Nearly 99 percent alike in genetic makeup, chimpanzees and humans might be even more similar were it not for what researchers call “lifestyle” changes in the 6 million years that separate us from a common ancestor. Specifically, two key differences are how humans and chimps perceive smells and what we eat.
A massive gene-comparison project involving two Cornell University scientists, and reported in the latest issue of the journal Science (Dec. 12, 2003), found these and many other differen
New approaches yield gene-rich regions, accelerate sequencing
Decoding of a variety of plant genomes could accelerate due to two complementary methods that remove from analysis vast stretches of DNA that do not contain genes.
The approaches, applied jointly in efforts to determine the gene sequences in maize, are described in the Dec. 19 issue of the journal Science. The evaluation of these methods and the assembly of the resulting sequences were undertaken by two groups led
Humans are not alone in suffering the ravages of aging. Cockroaches endure it, too.
Case Western Reserve University researchers reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology that as the roach’s life wanes between 60-65 weeks after the onset of adulthood, and the cockroach slows down, experiences stiff joints and has problems climbing and a decreased spontaneous fleeing response. Death comes shortly after the onset of these movement problems.
Angela Ridgel, a post doc
The gemstone opal could be manufactured synthetically copying a technique employed by a beetle to control the appearance of its outer shell.
Researchers from the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford have discovered the first case of opal in an animal, in this case in the weevil Pachyrhynchus argus, found in forests in north-eastern Queensland, Australia. This animal produces a photonic crystal structure analogous to that of opal, which gives it a relatively uniform, metallic co
International HapMap Project begins the cartography of human genome variation
Tracking down genes involved in health and disease and the response of patients to therapies is a principal goal of contemporary biomedical research. In the December 18 issue of Nature, the International HapMap Consortium describes the new tools and approaches it has developed that will enhance the ability of scientists to identify disease-related genes and to develop corresponding diagnostic and therapeutic
Many of our actions are guided by past experiences combined with insight into the future. A major mystery of biology involves understanding how brain cells can create a representation that extends backward and forward through time. A new study conducted by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine published in the December 18th issue of Neuron begins to unravel the brain activity that underlies concurrent processing of the recent past, the present and the imminent future.
Memories that
A US$53-million international project to sequence the cattle genome, involving CSIRO, was launched today (1pm, Friday, 12 December US, 5am Saturday, 13 December AEST) in Washington, United States.
The joint sequencing effort is led by the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and also involves United States Department of Agriculture; the State of Texas; Genome Canada; and Agritech Investments Ltd, Dairy Insight Inc. and
The researchers — led by Lokesh Joshi, an ASU associate professor in the Harrington Department of Bioengineering of the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and a member of the Arizona BioDesign Institute — have found a pathway whereby plants can generate human-like proteins. This discovery could lead to an effective means of producing proteins that are medically important and do so with a method that could be effective and less expensive than current methods, Joshi said.
“The discovery ha
Purdue University scientists have peered inside a virus and visualized for the first time how it produces and exports genetic materials into a host cell, an advance in fundamental research that also could have implications for the development of antiviral agents.
Using improved microscope technology, a team including Purdue’s Timothy S. Baker and a colleague at Harvard has determined the structure of a reovirus (short for “respiratory enteric orphan” virus) down to the 7.6-angstrom scale, be
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